Written by Joe Bates - airport-world.com
The $50 million retrofit and transformation of Saõ Paulo–Guarulhos International Airport’s former terminals 1 and 2 into a single, new-look passenger complex is taking shape, with about a year left to go on the project.
The creation of a new Terminal 2 from the former facilities will equip the gateway with some of the most modern and passenger friendly airport facilities in Brazil, including the new 192,000sqm Terminal 3 opened in 2014.
According to the airport, the desire to increase its operational capacity, offer more comfort and convenience to passengers, ensure faster boarding and arrival procedures and improved retail and F&B facilities – the size of the shopping area will double – are the key drivers behind the upgrade.
Architecturally, the airport claims that its new Terminal 2 will provide “ample spaces and lighting and a more modern look” with expanded check-in, baggage claim, and boarding and arrival areas.
It will also feature a single, centralised security area for the screening of all passengers and cabin baggage.
It will also feature a single, centralised security area for the screening of all passengers and cabin baggage.
The concessions layout for T2 will include construction of 'GRU Avenue', a dedicated airside area for shops, restaurants and bars with views of the airfield. It will also have a mezzanine level landside foodcourt.
Brazil’s busiest gateway needs the new terminal to keep pace with soaring traffic demand, which has more than trebled over the last decade from 12.9mppa in 2004 to 39.5 million in 2014.
The gateway, which is also known as GRU Airport following a 2012 rebrand, has appointed Brazil’s Fernandes Arquitetos Associados in partnership with EBEI Engenharia to spearhead the T2 project.
Fernandes Arquitetos Associados says that the main goal is to make the new Terminal 2 – essentially created by retrofitting 30-year old buildings – achieves close to the same standards of services offered by the airport’s new showpiece T3, which it notes was inspired by the world’s best airports and boasts innovative technologies and equipment.
Creative solutions being employed by the design team to help it try and achieve this lofty ambition are said to include better lighting and the use of materials that help project an ambiance of “modernity, coziness, quality, and simplicity”; the use of ceilings, floors and colours to create natural flows through T2; and the concentration of F&B outlets to form true foodcourts.
Fernandes Arquitetos Associados believes that the use of natural light, water and vegetation together with unobstructed views will also help make T2 a “peaceful environment”.
The use of natural lighting to help heat and cool interior temperatures, energy saving lamps, occupancy sensors and photocells should also ensure that T2 is one of the most energy efficient airport terminals in Latin America.
In readiness for T2’s opening next year, upon completion of the second phase of its development on December 2, the airport’s existing Terminal 4 became the airport’s new Terminal 1.
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